GENEVA (2 June 2020) – Rising disparities in how COVID-19 is affecting communities, and the major disproportionate impact it is having on racial and ethnic minorities, including people of African descent, have exposed alarming inequalities within our societies, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Tuesday. She noted that similar inequalities are also fuelling the widespread protests affecting hundreds of cities across the United States.

“The data tells us of a devastating impact from COVID-19 on people of African descent, as well as ethnic minorities in some countries, including Brazil, France, the United Kingdom and the United States,” Bachelet said. “In many other places, we expect similar patterns are occurring, but we are unable to say for sure given that data by race and ethnicity is simply not being collected or reported,” she said.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, HRiC has been collecting reports of disproportionate human rights violations in maternity care.

The first set of rights violations have been published in a report (available below) and sent to the United Nations.

The world is dealing with unprecedented challenges arising from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and health systems are now focused on social distancing and avoidance of non-urgent, non-COVID related medical care. Unfortunately, the strains on our health systems and the difficulties are not being borne equally by the population – pregnant women in particular still require competent and compassionate labour, birth and postpartum care.

In this time of health crisis policy actors, hospital systems, and birth care providers are changing the provision of pregnancy and birth care in ways not based on scientific evidence nor in best practices endorsed by the WHO. Not only are the changes described in this document not based on evidence, the changes are arguably unnecessary and even harmful. When necessary changes are being implemented they are often done in ways out of proportion to the risks posed by coronavirus. Where necessary changes are made, such as moving to remote tele-health visits, few health systems are implementing innovative methods to reach women who lack access to technology and information, especially marginalized women who were already needed more support before the pandemic started.

June 2, 2020 - The coronavirus is not only claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, but is also causing a global economic crisis that is expected to rival or exceed that of any recession in the past 150 years. Although decisive action and containment measures are helping flatten the curve of infection, such measures inevitably deepen and lengthen the economic recession.

Poverty, lack of social or economic opportunity and limited labour protections are the main root causes and drivers that render people vulnerable or cause them to fall victim to human trafficking. This unprecedented crisis will likely exacerbate all of those factors and result in developments (see Figure 1) that must be noted by anti-human-trafficking communities and stakeholders.